Conveniently located right across the street from Edison High school, the Ascon Nesi landfill is the place to go if you're looking for a glimpse of decades of environmental degradation, neglect, and under-regulation. There are five lagoons full of oil, sludge, petroleum byproducts and various cancer-causing chemicals, as well as eight pits full of debris related to the oil and construction industries, which used the dumpsite as a waste repository for decades.
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When I first wrote about Ascon Nesi's death lagoons back in February 1998–I'd include a link to the story but this was just before we started publishing online–all that protected the public from their slimy depths was a broken chain-link fence and a couple of discarded “No Tresspassing” signs. Within days of the publication of the article, which ran complete with photographs of dead pelicans protruding from tarpits and fields of rusting barrels, the fence had been fixed and the signs replaced. But still the sludge remained.
Award-winning investigative journalist Nick Schou is Editor of OC Weekly. He is the author of Kill the Messenger: How the CIA’s Crack Cocaine Controversy Destroyed Journalist Gary Webb (Nation Books 2006), which provided the basis for the 2014 Focus Features release starring Jeremy Renner and the L.A. Times-bestseller Orange Sunshine: The Brotherhood of Eternal Love’s Quest to bring Peace, Love and Acid to the World, (Thomas Dunne 2009). He is also the author of The Weed Runners (2013) and Spooked: How the CIA Manipulates the Media and Hoodwinks Hollywood (2016).